This Movietone
newsreel from the week of November 20, 1938 is the only known filmed American
news story about Kristallnacht. The footage shows President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull at microphones with voice-over
summary statements, followed by very strong on camera statements by former
President Herbert Hoover, Al Smith, and Alf Landon.

No actual
footage of the violence is shown, because the Nazi action was ordered
to be executed in secret and at night. As a document of its time, this
newsreel remains a dramatic statement, as much for the omissions as for
the specific content.